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Book Review: LIP HOOK by David Hine and Mark Stafford

Somewhere in the British Isles, at the end of a neglected road, there is a village called Lip Hook. For its inhabitants, the village is more than the end of the road—it’s the end of the world. Beyond it, there is nothing but mist-shrouded marshland. Few travelers take the road to Lip Hook, but one foggy night, a car speeds perilously toward the village. The driver is a dangerously beautiful woman, the passenger a man with a gunshot wound and a suitcase containing a treasure he has risked his life for. Cash-strapped but in need of a place to hide, the two fugitives seek shelter at the Hanged Man Inn, where the woman persuades the innkeeper to accept payment in kind. As days pass and the woman extends her services to more of Lip Hook’s men, among them the village priest, a false faith grips the community—and reason, logic, and humanity begin to disappear.
Often a cover to a book can be misleading to what is really going on between the pages but the cover to this book not only gives you a sinister tease but wants you to find out more. The beauty and serenity of the British Isles gets masked in an eerie mist in this tale of rural unease which gives more then a slight nod to folk horror like THE WICKER MAN (1973) and THE BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW (1971). Starting off with a Bonnie and Clyde type duo driving into the village of Lip Hook after escaping from whoever was chasing them you think you would have the story figured out from there, but within only a few pages the story takes a remarkable turn and its one you will want to find out for yourself. Throughout its 160 plus pages of tense storytelling by David Hine and its beautiful but dark art by Mark Stafford, you will find yourself drawn into the life of the village folk of Lip Hook. When the mist rolls in be wary of what lies within.

Review by Peter ‘Witchfinder‘ Hopkins

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